Instant Fundas

If you have been following my blog, you will remember that I wrote about a clip board manager called Ditto a few months ago. This is even better.

OpenExpert is an application that makes it easier for you to configure the Open With menu that you get when you right click on any file. Normally, under Windows the Open With menu provide you a list of application that you can use to open a particular file. If you want to open the file with another application not given on the list, you can click Choose Program and then use the desired program. You can also check " Always use this application " to make it the default program for that type of files. If you don't check the always use box, chances are that you might have to again select that program the next time you try to open the file.

When Windows freezes it usually happens for one single application or process taking up all the cycles of the CPU thereby denying other running processes their share of the CPU. The result is that the whole of Windows and all applications become unresponsive and we say that the computer has frozen. One offending application can bring the whole system down because there is no way of monitoring and restricting how much CPU cycle a particular application can consume.

The images that you see on your monitor is the result of an illusion - an illusion created by the juxtaposition of tiny dots of red, blue and green. These three colors called the primary colors alone can create all the colors of this universe, thanks to the insensitivity of the human eye. Monitors exploit this to create all the 16,777,216 shades of colors supported by an operating system. However, they can rarely display the true colors of the real world. Instead they try to represent these colors as truly as possible. How close the monitors represents colors and brightness depends on how well the monitors are calibrated.

Online dictionaries are abundant. But their biggest drawback is their dependence on an active internet connection. When the internet connection is down these dictionaries become useless. This is when offline dictionaries come helpful. So here I have compiled 5 popular and very handy free dictionaries for Windows.

ThumbView is an open source application that enables image thumbnails support in Windows Explorer for filetypes that are not natively supported by Windows. Windows supports thumbnail view of only a handful of image file formats like JPEG, BMP, GIF and some others. Other image file formats which are not supported do not show a thumbnail preview in Windows Explorer. ThumbView will add support to a total of 19 image types - directly inside any Explorer window!

A few months earlier I showed you a crude but effective way to lock your PC using a USB thumb drive , without using any software. Now, I bring you another way to do this: this time using a software. It's easier and more secure. Besides the software is free.

Without a doubt, the graphical user interface (GUI) along with the mouse is the best way to interact with your computer. But some routine work like copy-paste, minimize, maximize etc can be executed faster with the help of keyboard shortcuts. If you do a lot of typing, then switching between your keyboard and mouse can greatly slow down your work. Once you start using shortcuts you can immediately see the effect it has on your operating speed and your geekiness. Windows has hundreds of keyboard shortcuts. If you do a Google search you will be overwhelmed with the amount of results you will get. Of course, you can't remember all these. Nobody does, or shall I say, very few does. But you can certainly remember a few dozen, at least you should try for it can greatly improve your speed of using your computer. Here are some basic keyboard shortcuts that you should definitely commit to memory.

A utility that handles compressed files like zip and rar is an essential requirement for every Windows PC. The softwares that are most popular in this area are WinZip and WinRar. Both of these are paid softwares, so some of us are even running cracked version of these tools. But there are some freeware tools that does the same thing as WinRar and WinZip and some do it even better. Here are some of the best freeware application that you can use instead of WinZip and WinRar.